To expand on my point, college football has different rules than NFL, but it's still football. NHL hockey has different rules, and a different playing surface than Olympic hockey, but it's all hockey. Strikeforce had different rules than the UFC before the ZUFFA purchase, but it was still MMA. If you look up MMA fighter records of people who have fought under multiple rule sets, you'll see all of their fight results listed with no differentiation by rule set.

Otherwise you open the door to people who train "strikeforce" (because it had different rules, what else do we call it, if not MMA?)

Then you got things like Affliction, which used standard MMA rules (IIRC), only they fought in a ring rather than a cage (does that matter? I dunno, it's definitely different though). The argument about K1, imo, is poor, as K1 is kickboxing (which brings up a similar argument, as there are a ton of different kickboxing rule sets, but they're all kickboxing of some form or another, right? (I dunno, I'm not a kickboxer).

To expand on my point, college football has different rules than NFL, but it's still football.

Where does Rugby fit in?

NHL hockey has different rules, and a different playing surface than Olympic hockey, but it's all hockey. Strikeforce had different rules than the UFC before the ZUFFA purchase, but it was still MMA. If you look up MMA fighter records of people who have fought under multiple rule sets, you'll see all of their fight results listed with no differentiation by rule set.

Otherwise you open the door to people who train "strikeforce" (because it had different rules, what else do we call it, if not MMA?)

Then you got things like Affliction, which used standard MMA rules (IIRC), only they fought in a ring rather than a cage (does that matter? I dunno, it's definitely different though). The argument about K1, imo, is poor, as K1 is kickboxing (which brings up a similar argument, as there are a ton of different kickboxing rule sets, but they're all kickboxing of some form or another, right? (I dunno, I'm not a kickboxer).

Ok so if your point of contention is that the unified rules do not define all of what is MMA, i agree.

I just want to avoid getting sucked into itwasn'tme's black hole of reasoning, that Goodlun was addressing.

To expand on my point, college football has different rules than NFL, but it's still football. NHL hockey has different rules, and a different playing surface than Olympic hockey, but it's all hockey. Strikeforce had different rules than the UFC before the ZUFFA purchase, but it was still MMA. If you look up MMA fighter records of people who have fought under multiple rule sets, you'll see all of their fight results listed with no differentiation by rule set.

Otherwise you open the door to people who train "strikeforce" (because it had different rules, what else do we call it, if not MMA?)

Then you got things like Affliction, which used standard MMA rules (IIRC), only they fought in a ring rather than a cage (does that matter? I dunno, it's definitely different though). The argument about K1, imo, is poor, as K1 is kickboxing (which brings up a similar argument, as there are a ton of different kickboxing rule sets, but they're all kickboxing of some form or another, right? (I dunno, I'm not a kickboxer).

Dream, Pride, UFC prior to unification are all grand fathered in. That being said we all know that they are a different sport than current MMA.
As far as nit picky differences such as
Olympic Judo vs Freesyle Judo vs Kosen Judo rulesets I would say yes they are all Judo. But they we have the tool to further classify them by a more specific skill set the same way we can further classify College Football from that of the NFL both are football but if your having a conversation with someone about a rule that is different between the two you do have to say which one your talking about.